This Time Tomorrow(62)

The woman let go of Alice’s hand and reached for a deck of tarot cards. She set them on the table in front of Alice. “Cut the deck,” she said. “And again. Now pick the top card.” Alice flipped it over. A colorfully dressed boy with a bundle on a stick stood on the edge of a cliff, clearly about to traipse right off onto the rocks below. The Fool, it read, in large letters along the bottom of the card, closest to Alice. There was a small white dog nipping at the boy’s heels, perhaps in warning, and the boy held a rose in his hand.

“That doesn’t seem promising,” Alice said.

The woman leaned back in her chair and laughed. “It heard you. The deck. You see? This card, I know, people look at it, and they see the word fool and they can get bent out of shape, but that’s not what it’s saying. If you draw Death, it doesn’t mean you’re about to die, and if you draw Fool, it doesn’t mean that you’re dumb.

“Let me tell you about the Fool. He’s number zero in the deck, which means that he’s always starting from nothing, from innocence, from a blank slate. That’s us, all of us—the Fool is always starting fresh. He doesn’t know what’s coming—none of us do, right? The dog could warn him, he could stop to pick another flower, he could change directions—all he knows is what he sees.” She pointed to the different parts of the card. “The blue sky. The clouds. He’s at the beginning of his journey. And that can be a brand-new beginning, or a change. All he needs to remember is to be aware of what surrounds him. The journey is what changes him. And it depends what kind of life you mean, right? Some people come and want to know about love—the Fool can mean a new love, a fresh love—some people want to know about their job, their career, their money—the Fool can mean new opportunities in those areas, too.”

“What about the dog?” Alice felt dizzy. “Is that, like, some sort of spirit animal?”

“Listen, spirit animals are a whole different thing. The dog is loyal—” The woman whistled once, sharply, and a tiny ball of brown fluff skittered across the floor toward her. She leaned over and picked it up. “This is a dog, but it’s also not just a dog. This dog is my protector, my rock.” The dog, a dead ringer for Toto, leaned back on its hind legs and stretched its mouth up for a kiss. The psychic let it lick her on the cheek and then gently put it back down on the floor. “That’s what the dog is. You have your own dog. A friend, a family member. You might have a few. Someone who wants to protect you, who is always loyal. You gotta listen to your dog.”

“Okay,” Alice said.

“The Fool is a major card, too. It’s not about a promotion, or whether you said the wrong thing one time, that kinda thing. It’s the big stuff.”

“Couldn’t get any bigger,” Alice said.

“Basically, this card is saying you never know what’s coming, so you gotta be happy when it’s there. Whatever it is. I’ve been listening to this podcast, The Universe is Your Boss!, you know that one?”

Alice shook her head. The dog padded over, its nails ticking on the linoleum floor, and sniffed her hand.

“It’s good, you should listen. Anyway, the host ends every episode by saying, ‘Joy is coming.’ I think it’s a quote from a book or something, I don’t know. But she says it every week. Joy is coming. That’s the Fool. You just gotta keep your eyes open and look for it. Make sure not to fall.”

“You say that like it’s easy,” Alice said. Her phone was dinging, and she took it out of her pocket. The Find My iPhone alarm was going off. Tommy was tracking her. Which she understood. She’d married him young, high school sweethearts. They’d never been apart. Alice thought about having sex with only one person for your entire life—it sounded like a holdover from the days when life expectancy was thirty-five. “I have to go,” Alice said. She stood up and hugged the woman, who didn’t seem surprised.

“I do Venmo,” she said, and pointed to a printed card by the door with a QR code. Alice snapped a picture and hurried out, the dog, little Toto, nipping playfully at her feathers.





43



Tommy would either call off the party and jump in a cab or he’d call the police, Alice didn’t know which. Maybe both. She turned off the Find My iPhone button and then turned off her phone altogether. He would probably guess that she’d go to Pomander, and so once she got up to 94th Street, Alice thought about going somewhere else, but there was nowhere else to go. It wasn’t a crime to leave your birthday party. It was a dick move, for sure, but it wasn’t a crime. She wasn’t a missing person. She was just a fool.

It was early yet—only ten o’clock. Alice opened the gate, relieved to hear the familiar creak of heavy iron. There were lights on at the Romans’, and at the house directly across from Leonard’s, which now belonged to an actor whose face Alice knew but whose name she could never remember. The cat sitter, Callie, lived next door, and Alice could see her parents watching television in their living room. Callie herself was probably in bed. It was such a good street to grow up on, but Alice also remembered how tight it sometimes felt, how short the view was out the window. Maybe that’s why Leonard had had trouble writing—he couldn’t see anything outside, just a house that looked exactly like his, and a city of fire escapes and windows in the back. But maybe he hadn’t had trouble, not this time.